The Marauders and the Mirror of Erised
by talenx5220
Summary: Hogwarts, year 1: James, Sirius, Remus and Peter, meet and become fast friends. But trouble arises - and now, on top of dealing with their new nemeses (i.e., Lucius and Severus), the boys must embark on a dangerous quest on behalf of Albus Dumbledore.


A/N: The Marauders definitely deserve their own series. So, here is the beginning of the first of seven installments about their adventures during their years at Hogwarts - almost a parallel to the Harry Potter series, except that it's about the main characters' predecessors. Everything is, and will stay, completely true to the information given in the Harry Potter series. If you happen to notice a discrepancy, please let me know and I'll fix it.  
  
Disclaimer: this is J.K. Rowling's sandbox that I, like everyone else here, am playing in. :)  
  
* * *  
  
At Number Thirty-four Terrace Road, the Potter Manor, Mrs. Adalena Potter was sitting in her favorite armchair by the fireplace in her living room. She had her reading glasses on and was paging idly through the book in her lap. The heavy summer rain poured down outside, obscuring the street from view, and the entire house was quiet, as cleaning hour was over.  
  
Mrs. Potter was glad to finally be able to relax and put her feet up; it had been a rather trying Saturday. First the Daily Prophet had been delivered late, due to the assigned owl being ill. Then her husband, Corey, had had to rush back to work at the office for an emergency that had arisen. And then, just when she had been thinking about getting something done about those pests infesting the gardens out behind the manor, it had started to rain.  
  
She had been sitting here for about two hours now. Looking up, she sighed and shook her head. The quiet should be a good thing, she supposed, as she had had precious little of it for eleven years - but that was just the problem. Whenever it was this quiet, something was wrong somewhere.  
  
Mrs. Potter adjusted her reading glasses on her nose and turned a page. She tried to concentrate on her book, but to no avail.  
  
It was too quiet.  
  
Suddenly the flames in the fireplace flared, bringing Mrs. Potter's head up sharply in a reflex that had, out of necessity to survive, developed to near-lighting speed over the past eleven years.  
  
"Adalena?" a voice called from the fire.  
  
Putting a finger in Extreme Spells for Extreme Youngsters to mark her place, Mrs. Potter closed the book and leaned apprehensively towards the flames.  
  
"Yes?" she said. "Is that you, Edna?"  
  
"Yes." Edna sounded distracted. "Do you have a moment? It's about James."  
  
James. Now how did I know this was coming? Mrs. Potter thought wearily, putting her book aside and standing up. It's always about James. But at least now she would be facing the problem rather than wondering in the strange quiet.  
  
Mrs. Potter stepped across the hearth and directly into the fire.  
  
She felt the usual lightheadedness as she began to revolve faster and faster in the tickling warmth, and was careful to tuck her elbows in so as not to bump anything. In a moment she was stepping out into the room to which she had been summoned.  
  
She found herself in the apartments that Edna Darell, a friend of the family, kept above the store she owned on Diagon Alley. In sharp contrast to the rain that had been coming down outside Mrs. Potter's own window, sunlight streamed into Edna's immaculately clean living room; there was no storm around this area, apparently. And sitting back on the couch, dust- covered, scraped and bruised and holding his head gingerly as if afraid it might fall off, was -  
  
"James!" Mrs. Potter exclaimed.  
  
At the sound of his mother's voice, eleven-year-old James Potter bolted upright, bright hazel eyes snapping to her face in alarm.  
  
"Ah - Mum!" he said in an attempt at a jaunty voice. He tried to flatten his untidy black hair, as he always did whenever he was in trouble, although it was a futile effort; his hair simply went every which way, and nothing could be done about it.  
  
Mrs. Potter, about to dash across the room to her son, brought herself up short. Stopping where she was in front of the fireplace, she folded her arms, fixing him with a pained look born of exasperation that once again he had managed to get himself into trouble.  
  
"James," she repeated, this time in tones of reproach rather than concern. Then she turned to Edna, who stood some distance away from the couch, looking on with a half-troubled, half-amused expression.  
  
"What happened?" Mrs. Potter asked wearily.  
  
"I'm not quite sure myself," Edna replied in some perplexity, glancing at James in all his roughed-up glory. "I happened to glance outside the window of my store and saw your son and Kent and Adam" - Kent and Adam were two friends of James's - "involved in a street fight with half a dozen older boys who were using their wands. Kent's and Adam's parents took them home. I lifted the spells the older boys used on the three," she added.  
  
"A street fight?" Mrs. Potter repeated.  
  
"Yes. Evidently it carried out from the Leaky Cauldron" - Edna paused and then plunged onward with the air of a person reluctant to go on, but determined to report the entire incident - "where James, Kent and Adam had been drinking -"  
  
A sudden movement from James caught Mrs. Potter's eye; he had tensed up, looking on the edge of panic, and was frantically mouthing three words to Edna:  
  
Don't tell her!  
  
"Drinking what?" Mrs. Potter said after a second, softly, dangerously.  
  
Edna had stopped talking, also watching James, but now visibly steeled herself at Mrs. Potter's prompting and made herself say the last word.  
  
"...firewhisky."  
  
James's shoulders slumped.  
  
For a moment, there was dead silence. Mrs. Potter's eyes were fixed upon her son, who was looking as if the sky might fall in on him at any moment.  
  
Then Mrs. Potter said, in a stern voice like ice, "Go home."  
  
She pointed at the fireplace.  
  
James immediately leaped up from the couch, wincing as the action jolted his scrapes and bruises - and his head, which must be aching from the firewhisky, Mrs. Potter thought angrily - and crossed the room to the fireplace, darting a wary look at his mother. He grabbed a handful of Floo powder.  
  
"Thanks, Mrs. Darell," he said uneasily to Edna, who responded with a nod and a sympathetic smile. Then James tossed the powder into the flames - they turned emerald green and roared above his head - and stepped in, saying, "Number Thirty-four, Terrace Road."  
  
He vanished.  
  
Mrs. Potter moved to the fireplace. "I'm much obliged to you, Edna," she told her friend, her tone going back to normal now that her son was out of earshot. "I don't know what James was thinking... firewhisky, good heavens... I ask you..."  
  
The witch chuckled.  
  
"Don't go too hard on him, Adalena," she said mildly. "After all, he's starting school quite soon... these are his last weeks of freedom."  
  
"School!" Mrs. Potter exhaled. "Thank heavens for Hogwarts. After eleven years of endless trouble from that boy... the wand-stealing period... the broomstick incident... the Gringotts incident... I'll be quite glad to have this one year of peace."  
  
"He's got his letter, has he?" Edna asked curiously.  
  
"Yes, Professor Dumbledore just sent it this morning. James hasn't seen it yet... too busy frequenting pubs and getting into fights..."  
  
Edna laughed.  
  
"He'll be grown before you know it, Adalena, and finding work before you can blink."  
  
"Be that as it may," said Mrs. Potter, "the sooner that school takes him off my hands, the better."  
  
She took a handful of glittering powder from the pot on the mantelpiece and smiled at her friend.  
  
"Again, thank you."  
  
"Anything for James," Edna replied warmly, returning the smile with an ironic touch. "Rascal though he is, the boy grows on you."  
  
"Oh, I know," Mrs. Potter said dryly. "He's been growing on me for eleven years." She threw the Floo Powder into the fireplace. "I'm much too soft with him."  
  
Stepping into the green flames in, Mrs. Potter called out, "Number Thirty- four, Terrace Road!"  
  
A moment later, she was gone.  
  
Edna shook her head, staring into her fireplace. Whatever Mrs. Potter said about being too soft with James... Edna recalled the steely glint in her friend's eye, and knew that she did not envy young James Potter one bit.  
  
* * *  
  
Wearing her white veil and holding a bouquet of flowers that had been given to her, Andromeda walked, smiling, through the crowd of well-wishers in the reception room.  
  
"Congratulations, dear..."  
  
"We're so happy for you..."  
  
"Such a lovely ceremony..."  
  
The wedding had been lovely. The decorations - conjured secretly in advance as a surprise for Andromeda by some of her girlfriends - were beautiful. Everybody was beaming. More than fifty of her witch and wizard friends, many of them graduates from her old school, Hogwarts, turned up, disguised as Muggles to blend in with the groom's Muggle guests. Everybody Andromeda knew was there.  
  
Well - Andromeda's smile faded slightly - almost everybody.  
  
Admittedly, she had never been that close to her immediate family, or to many of her relatives, and in fact was on rather bad terms with several of them because she was marrying a Muggle. But the plain fact of it was that she had been Andromeda Black before today, and not a single one of the Blacks had showed up for her wedding. Not her parents, not her sisters - Bellatrix and Narcissa - nobody.  
  
Well, nobody except -  
  
Andromeda grinned again. Yes, the ceremony had been wonderful, and had gone off smoothly - except for the one, unplanned, completely unexpected event.  
  
Just as the wedding was finishing up, a deafening, explosive series of bangs and whistles had begun, filling the air, all around the seated guests. Two names appeared in huge, glowing letters, floating in the air high above the heads of the guests: 'Andromeda Black' and 'Ted Tonks', the name of the man she was marrying. As the Muggles looked on in undisguised amazement, as the witches and wizards exchanged surprised glances, the two names came together and the biggest bang of all sounded. 'Andromeda Tonks' was now what was written in the air. The name hung there for a moment, shining and sparkling brightly through all the bangs and whistles, and there was a rush of tumultuous applause from the guests. Then the words faded.  
  
The ceremony continued after a few stunned moments, and at its conclusion, Ted asked of the witches and wizards present that the Muggles' memory of that brief show be left intact. So, rather than use the Memory Charm on the non-magical people, the word had been passed around that the spectacular event had been pulled off with the aid of firecrackers and special lights.  
  
Remembering that, Andromeda's grin grew, her high spirits restored, and she began searching through the guests. He couldn't have left that quickly... he had to be around here somewhere...  
  
"All right, Tonks?"  
  
Andromeda stopped short at the sound of the voice behind her. Then she thought wryly, I should have known, and turned around to face the speaker.  
  
"Wotcher, Sirius," she grinned.  
  
Her favorite cousin, eleven-year-old Sirius Black, stood behind her, wearing dark blue dress robes that set him apart from all the other guests at the receptions - Muggles or not, they were all dressed more or less like non-magical people.  
  
He pushed his long, dark hair off his forehead, his grin mirroring hers, his dark eyes mischievous. "I can call you Tonks, right?" he said, teasing.  
  
"I would think so," Andromeda said dryly. "You're the one who put my new name up there in the air."  
  
Sirius laughed, trying and failing not to look jubilantly self-satisfied. "You noticed?"  
  
Andromeda rolled her eyes.  
  
"Sirius, everyone noticed, you had to be blind and deaf not to notice, we had to tell the Muggles they were firecrackers -"  
  
"Excellent," said Sirius, with an evil gleam in his eye.  
  
"Well, any element of reprimand in that comment was obviously lost on you," Andromeda observed, but she couldn't put any real harshness into her voice.  
  
"As always," her cousin acknowledged lightly.  
  
The two of them laughed. Then they were companionably quiet for a moment. Sirius was looking around at the guests. "So, I'm the only representative of the Black family here today, am I?" he said at length.  
  
"Yes," Andromeda sighed, "and frankly, that's just the way I wanted it. I've never really been proud to be a Black, and they all drive me mad, besides -"  
  
Sirius's face darkened.  
  
"Rotten, the lot of them," he muttered. "Mother's the worst. All that nonsense about pureblood - honestly, the way she goes on, the old wizarding families are all practically royalty - ours especially - and Muggles are all useless bits of -"  
  
"Shhh," Andromeda said, glancing around. None of the guests seemed to have noticed Sirius's words.  
  
Sirius fell silent, still looking mutinous.  
  
"So," Andromeda said, trying to find a safe subject to switch to, "so - are you starting at Hogwarts in September, then?"  
  
Sirius brightened.  
  
"Yeah," he said, "yeah, I got my letter this morning... I'm going to get my stuff at Diagon Alley next week." He looked excited. "Dumbledore sounds great -"  
  
"He is," Andromeda interjected fervently, remembering her own experiences with the current Hogwarts headmaster.  
  
" - I can already tell 'cause he disagrees with Mother about the whole pureblood thing -"  
  
Sirius broke off suddenly, this time of his own accord, as if realizing something. Then he grimaced abruptly.  
  
"I've got to go," he said in a low voice. "Mother wanted to talk to me about Hogwarts - I expect she wants to tell me not to mix with the Muggle- borns - but if she finds out I came here today -"  
  
Andromeda repressed a regretful sigh. She would be quite busy in the months to come, dealing with life as a married woman, and Sirius would be caught up in his studies. Or caught up making mischief, she thought ruefully, that would be more likely.  
  
Aloud, she said, "All right... you should get back to Grimmauld Place, then... how did you get here, anyway?"  
  
"The Knight Bus," Sirius said proudly. "I nicked the wand from Rodolphus - Bellatrix's boyfriend, you know, the two of them came around last week - and I figured out how to make the bangs and the whistles, and the letters, and then I used it to catch the Bus -"  
  
Andromeda laughed, delighted. Her cousin was the cleverest boy of his age that she'd ever met - as well as the most trouble-making one. The two traits together made for quite an interesting life for everyone around him. He did try his mother's patience. But then again, Mrs. Black's patience deserved to be tried - the woman was downright nasty sometimes.  
  
"I expect you can catch the Knight Bus back, then," Andromeda said to Sirius, "go on -"  
  
But despite her words, she impulsively reached out and embraced him.  
  
"Thanks," she said softly. "What you did today at the wedding means a lot to me. It means a lot to me that you came, Sirius. If you get any trouble at home, blame it on me." She smiled down at the top of her cousin's head. "And Hogwarts is a wonderful school. Have fun there - you deserve it."  
  
Andromeda felt Sirius's arms go around her briefly. Then he let go and stepped away.  
  
"You know," he said to her, grinning impishly once again, "if you keep up with this emotional stuff, you're going to end up all wishy-washy - you'll go and live in a pink house with loads of lace and spend all your time knitting and name your daughter Nymphadora or something."  
  
And with a look of mock horror, he turned and made his way back through the guests towards the exit, earning odd stares at his apparel as he went.  
  
Andromeda watched him go, amused; that had been a typical Sirius good-bye.  
  
"I will see you again," she said as her cousin went out the door.  
  
For a few moments after he was out of sight, before she went to rejoin her guests and find her new husband, Andromeda stood where she was, staring thoughtfully into space.  
  
"Nymphadora..." she mused.  
  
* * *  
  
The sun shone overhead, but its golden light bounced uselessly off the huge mass of brambles that grew over and around the forest clearing. The solid dome of thorns was more than six feet thick, with its spiky cords woven and interwoven tightly.  
  
There was a slight pop and Gerald Lupin, a tall, weary-looking man with streaks of gray in his brown hair, Apparated some six feet away from the brambles.  
  
Mr. Lupin took his wand from his robes. He pointed it at the thorns and muttered, "Diffindo."  
  
The wall came apart. The strands snapped, untwisted themselves from each other and hung loosely. Now there was a man-sized entry hole in the brambles.  
  
Mr. Lupin pushed the dangling cords aside and entered cautiously into the near-darkness inside the dome.  
  
It took his eyes a moment to adjust. Little flecks of sunlight dotted the forest floor; all else was in shadow. Scanning the space, Mr. Lupin caught sight of a dark figure curled up on the ground and went quickly towards it.  
  
"Lumos," he said, holding up his wand, the tip of which lit immediately, flooding the dome with light. "Remus?" he said worriedly, crouching by the form on the floor. "Remus, are you all -"  
  
He cut off sharply as eleven-year-old Remus Lupin sat up, holding up a hand to shield his eyes from the light. After a moment he lowered his hand, blinking, and turned to stare around the dome. His gray eyes were tired - his whole face was tired - and his brown hair was disheveled.  
  
But what Mr. Lupin immediately noticed were the wounds. They looked like bite marks and there were two of them on his son's right leg, around his knee, and one of them on his shoulder. Remus also bore several scratches, including a particularly nasty-looking one across his left cheek.  
  
"Remus," Mr. Lupin said anxiously, "you need to get those looked at -"  
  
"Dad," Remus sighed, examining his knee by the light of his father's wand, "I'm fine."  
  
"But those cuts, they look really bad, and those bites, they could be dangerous -"  
  
Remus looked up wryly.  
  
"Dangerous?" he repeated, with a hollow sort of laugh. "I'm already a werewolf, what d'you think the danger is?"  
  
Mr. Lupin winced, but kept his voice firm. "Infection," he said. "That sort of thing."  
  
Seeming to realize that his cynical attitude was hurting his father, Remus apologized.  
  
"I'm sorry... I'm really fine, Dad. I always bite and scratch myself, you know that, it's 'cause there aren't any people around for me to -" He stopped. "Anyway. It's just that last night was worse than most. I don't know why..."  
  
The nightmare had begun when his son was six years old. Remus went over to play at the house of a new friend, Timeon, and the two boys camped out on Timeon's back porch on the night of the full moon. But Remus's new friend had neglected to tell him one, crucial fact. That night, as Remus slept, Timeon transformed into a werewolf and bit Remus. Mr. and Mrs. Lupin were aghast when they found out, and furious at Timeon's parents for not warning them. They forebade Remus from ever seeing Timeon again.  
  
But they had bigger problems on their hands. They tried everything, went everywhere, saw all the doctors they could think of, trying to find a cure. None was revealed.  
  
The first transformation had been terrible. Remus stumbled out of the house as the sun was going down, going as fast as he could on his six-year-old legs, unable to stay indoors as he changed into the form of the terrible beast, the werewolf. His parents were afraid to let him go, but afraid to go after him - everybody knew that a werewolf in beast form was not in his right mind and would attack anyone and everyone who crossed his path. They spent the night in fear that their son would hurt himself or somebody else.  
  
The next day, finding a pale, sleeping Remus on their front steps, Mr. and Mrs. Lupin conjured the dome of thorns around a clearing in the woods behind their house far away from all neighbors. Ever since then, Remus had spent every full moon within that barrier.  
  
The Lupins' biggest worry had been that no school would accept Remus, being what he was. No headmaster would allow it; no parent would want their child exposed to a werewolf.  
  
But - Mr. Lupin was reminded of what he had been going to tell Remus - all that had changed today.  
  
"Come on," he said briskly, standing up. "Let's get back to the house. You can change into some fresh robes and wash up a bit - then we'll go to St. Mungo's and get you fixed up. And then" - he grinned - "we can go into Diagon Alley."  
  
Remus groaned as he rose to his feet, passing a hand through his brown hair.  
  
"Dad, I don't want to try any more foul concoctions - they don't work, they never have, they never will - that last one was horrible, honestly, I was sick for a week -"  
  
"Don't want to go to Diagon Alley?" Mr. Lupin feigned disappointment. "Oh, well... then I guess we won't be getting your school supplies, after all..."  
  
Remus, who had been looking off behind him, snapped his head back around to look at his father, his eyes searching Mr. Lupin's.  
  
"Sch - school supplies?" he stammered.  
  
The look on his face was painful - the boy had wanted so badly to go to school for so many years, but had given up the prospect as lost. Now that there was a chance, he hardly dared to hope.  
  
"School supplies," Mr. Lupin confirmed, his grin broadening. "Remus, you're accepted at Hogwarts."  
  
Remus's eyes widened, and he stared at his father, stunned.  
  
"The owl came this morning," Mr. Lupin went on, savoring his son's expression. "Professor Dumbledore - he's the headmaster at Hogwarts, a great wizard, a truly great man - writes that he knows of your situation and, as long as we take the necessary precautions, there is no reason why you shouldn't come to school."  
  
He took the letter, enclosed in an envelope of heavy parchment and addressed in emerald green ink, out of his robes and held it out to his son.  
  
Remus took it with trembling hands, opened it, and read what was written inside. Mr. Lupin watched his eyes moving down the page, his mouth forming the words.  
  
When he looked up, his eyes were shining and his entire face was radiant.  
  
"Blimey," he said, just above a whisper. "Blimey," he repeated louder, and then he started running around and around the dome, whooping and yelling and waving the letter.  
  
"I'm going to Hogwarts! I'm going to Hogwarts! I'm going to Hogwarts!"  
  
Mr. Lupin laughed, just as delighted as his son, but keeping his elation under slightly better control.  
  
"Professor Dumbledore will want to see you when you get in on the first day, mind," he said loudly, "to work out these precautions -"  
  
"I'm going to Hogwarts! I'm going to Hogwarts! I'm going to Hogwarts!"  
  
Mr. Lupin gave up, smiling. He would tell Remus the details later, after he had calmed down. In the meantime, the boy had had little cause to celebrate for the past five years - let him take as long as he wanted. There was time.  
  
There was another popping sound, and Mr. Lupin turned as his wife, Lemaire, Apparated outside the dome. She came inside, flinching slightly as she saw the damage her son had inflicted on himself the night before taking in the scene with a quizzical glance,.  
  
"I could hear him all the way from the house," she told her husband. "What is he -"  
  
She stopped speaking as she heard what Remus was saying. Then she whirled to face Mr. Lupin, her face a picture of astonishment.  
  
"Hogwarts?" she just managed to say.  
  
Mr. Lupin grinned for an answer.  
  
Just then Remus crashed into his mother, throwing his arms around her, yelling, "Mum, Mum, I'm going to Hogwarts! Come on, we're going into Diagon Alley today to get my things for school!"  
  
And with one last whoop, he dashed past his parents and out of the dome, running down the path back towards the house.  
  
* * *  
  
Gordon Green leaned against the wall of a store on Diagon Alley with his friends, Leroy Calmouth and Boris Thednik, watching the Magical Menagerie across the street and trying to look casual.  
  
"What is he doing in there?" he muttered. "We sent him in ten minutes ago to steal something and all he's doing is dawdling around the back!"  
  
"Maybe he chickened out," Leroy suggested.  
  
"Yeah, the kid's got no guts," Boris sniggered.  
  
"Shut up," Gordon growled, and the two fell silent. They resumed watching the Magical Menagerie.  
  
The boy they were looking at through the glass window had started hanging around with Gordon's gang, which had the reputation for being the toughest group of their age, in Diagon Alley about a week ago. He was small, with mousy brown hair and a pointed nose, and seemed to have endless nervous habits. At first, Gordon, Leroy and Boris were annoyed - who did this fellow think he was? Then Gordon realized that they could use the kid.  
  
And so they had sent him in to steal a creature from the Magical Menagerie, the care and benefits of which the four of them would split among themselves.  
  
"And the best part is," Gordon had said to his friends behind the small boy's back, "if he gets caught - we won't get in trouble!"  
  
But now, as the minutes passed and the boy only hung around the back of the shop, running a hand along the cages and stealing furtive looks at the wizard occupied over at the counter, Gordon found himself becoming faintly apprehensive. The twit could be chickening out - he'd panic and botch the job somehow - he likely didn't have enough brains to pull off something like this -  
  
Suddenly the small, mousy-haired boy banged open one of the cages and stuffed its occupant into the blue schoolbag he was carrying.  
  
Gordon groaned and hit himself in the forehead as several of the witches and wizards inside the store turned to stare wide-eyed at the small boy, who was now trying to contain the struggling schoolbag. Over by the counter, the wizard who owned the store looked sharply over at the source of all the commotion.  
  
The mousy-haired boy made a run for it and the wizard stood and gaped for a moment before barreling after him.  
  
The door across the street banged open - "Hey! You! Come back here!" floated out from inside - and eleven-year-old Peter Pettigrew tore out of the Magical Menagerie, clutching a bulging bag. His eyes, wide with fear, darted wildly and found Gordon and his friends across the street. Seeing them, Peter hesitated, as if debating whether to join them.  
  
All three of them made 'Run!' gestures, gesturing frantically down Diagon Alley. Peter stood as if frozen. The idiot IS going to come over here, Gordon thought in a panic. I was wrong, we're ALL going to get killed for this!  
  
But Peter hesitated only for a split second, and then turned and sprinted off in the direction that Gordon and his friends had indicated.  
  
The wizard that owned the Magical Menagerie, who had just dashed out the door of the shop, pointed his wand at the fleeing boy and yelled, "Impedimenta!"  
  
Peter went flying as the curse hit him. Gordon swore and heard the word echoed by Leroy and Boris as Peter was knocked hard to the ground, his hands flying out to catch himself. The bag came loose from his grip; a black and silver cat streaked out and ran off through the crowd.  
  
"Catch that cat!" the owner of the Magical Menagerie roared, striding towards Peter with his wand still out. A circle of onlookers had started to form the fallen boy, and now a few of them turned to watch as the stolen cat leaped straight up into the air - and landed on top of the chimney of a two-story shop. In a flash, it was gone over the roof.  
  
Gordon, transfixed with horror, could only watch as the furious wizard stumped towards Peter, who now completely surrounded by the crowd and had scrambled up and was poised to run.  
  
"You!" the wizard shouted. "You let Frog get away!"  
  
Gordon blinked and was completely confused for a moment before he realized that Frog must be the name of the black and silver cat that had just escaped.  
  
"What's your name?!" the wizard went on in a rage. "Where are your parents?!"  
  
And little Peter, with his eyes flickering all around like a scared rat's, raised a trembling arm and pointed straight at Gordon and his friends.  
  
"It was - it was them!" he said shrilly as all eyes turned to Gordon, Leroy and Boris. "It was them! They put me up to it!"  
  
"What?" the wizard demanded, shooting a glance at the three boys standing, terrified, against the wall.  
  
"They - they threatened me!" Peter gasped. "They said they'd hurt me if I didn't steal the cat!"  
  
"This is my son!"  
  
A large woman pushed her way through the crowd and grabbed Peter's shoulders, pulling him against her with the air of a possessive personal guard.  
  
"This is my son!" she proclaimed again to the entire circle of onlookers, her voice laden with booming indignation. Peter submitted willingly to her protection. "If anyone dares lay a hand on him -"  
  
"Madam, this boy has -" the Magical Menagerie owner tried to interject.  
  
"A more gentle, harmless boy you couldn't find!" Mrs. Pettigrew bellowed, rounding on the wizard. "He wouldn't hurt a fly!"  
  
"He tried to steal -"  
  
"He wouldn't steal a sugar cube!"  
  
" - responsible for letting a valuable animal escape -"  
  
"He would never -"  
  
"They put me up to it, Mum!" Peter cried, interrupting the exchange, and once again his finger was pointing at Gordon, Leroy, and Boris.  
  
"If he says they made him do it," Mrs. Pettigrew declared, glaring first at the three boys a ways down the street and then at the Magical Menagerie wizard, "then they made him do it!"  
  
The owner of the store seemed to hover in indecision for a moment, and then he seemed to conclude that the best course of action would be to accede to this intimidating woman's demands.  
  
The wizard whirled on Gordon and his friends. "You three, there! Come over here!"  
  
Gordon didn't hesitate.  
  
"Run!" he said, and he, Leroy, and Boris sprinted off in the opposite direction from that traitor, Peter, and his mother, and the entire crowd of witches and wizards.  
  
Gordon soon lost sight of his friends. He ran wildly through the crowd, hearing the owner of the Menagerie shout, "Impedimenta! Impedimenta!" behind him and took heart from the fact that the wizard's voice was getting fainter. Witches and wizards stared at him.  
  
Gordon made a sideways swerve and burst through the door of Flourish and Blotts. Ignoring the looks he drew from the store's occupants, he pushed past the witch just stepping out of the flames in the fireplace, snatched a handful of glittering powder from the pot on the mantelpiece, and threw it into the fire.  
  
He darted into the suddenly roaring, green flames and yelled, "Number eighteen, Tarsen Ave!"  
  
It was with a feeling of utter relief that he began to spin - he was safe! - and in a moment he was clambering out of the fireplace in his own home.  
  
He stood still for a moment, breathing fast, thinking savagely of what he would like to do to that scrawny Pettigrew boy. Why, Peter had not even hesitated to give Gordon, Leroy, and Boris away, even after they had opened their arms to him by including him in their scheme! As soon as the store owner had descended upon him, he had betrayed his friends. And his formidable mother had backed him up with all her power.  
  
I'll kill the git, Gordon thought angrily.  
  
"Where have you been?"  
  
Gordon looked around, breathing fast. His father had just come into the room; apparently he had left the potions he was always messing around with in the back room when he heard Gordon come in.  
  
But before Gordon could come up with some story, the flames in the fireplace leaped, and a voice called, "Is this the residence of Gordon Green!"  
  
Gordon stood frozen as his father went to answer. The little git had given the Menagerie wizard Gordon's name! And likely Leroy's and Boris's names, too. They were all in major trouble - planning a shoplifting at eleven years old.  
  
" - been the cause of a disturbance in Diagon Alley today -" the voice was saying from the fire.  
  
Gordon whirled and ran for the front door. He banged it open, dashed outside, and was running off down the street as his father started shouting his name.  
  
Peter Pettigrew, Gordon thought, a red haze of anger clouding his vision. I will get you for this... 


End file.
